Most truths about communication are timeless. With all the cultural and political tension we observe today it might seem this was written as a response to that tension. However, in fact, it is one more look into how to be the most effective safety motivational speaker possible. So how important is it to be politically correct?

Winter across the world brings with it a variety of weather conditions. From the biting cold, snow, rain and wind of the Northern Hemisphere to the scorching temperatures and humidity of the Southern Hemisphere, it pays to be fully prepared for this winter season.

For many years I worked as someone who came into a company or organization which was in serious risk of going under. It seemed strange to me that almost without exception there was a significant resistance to making change / improvement in a culture that most all thought to be terminally sick.

For a recent job assignment I was driving from Copper Mountain, Colorado to Denver, Colorado to catch a flight to the Pacific Northwest. As I prepared to leave, with a significant amount of spare time to make this important flight, I checked the internet for road conditions.

OSHA’s recent decision to delay the effective date of its controversial beryllium exposure rule has generated a lot of attention in the industrial safety media, and rightly so. The beryllium rule is a perfect example of the government overreach that industry often highlights: policies made with good intentions that go beyond their stated goal.

Last Christmas, I gave my husband Steve a page-a-day calendar with Insights from the Dalai Lama. Occasionally, Steve shares one of these daily insights with me.

Rob Archer, Director at LPP Consulting, kicked off 3M’s Safety Network Live in Bracknell (UK) on 27 September with a fascinating talk about stress and resilience – which featured the inner chimp, sex and bananas.

If a client came to us saying, “We know we have some leadership and culture issues: upward communication is poor, skill level of supervisors and managers in inconsistent, our people don’t un-derstand system thinking, and behavioral reliability is sketchy. We want to develop a high performance culture. How should we approach it?”

The social networking phenomenon has fostered many, usually misguided and ill-advised, attempts to capitalize on the popularity of the medium to boost sales, and to market to new (and usually younger) markets.